1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a regenerating method and apparatus for foamed plastics and, particularly, to a regenerating method and apparatus for melting scraps of foamed plastics while defoaming them to recover original plastics.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Foamed plastics such as foamed polystyrene, foamed polyethylene and foamed ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer are widely used as cushioning materials, heat insulation materials and the like, but a great amount of chips are resulted as scraps upon production of desired articles from these materials, as well as these articles, for example, cushioning materials employed for packaging various goods often produce a lot of wastes as scraps after the opening of the packages. Combustion and depolymerization methods are known for the disposal of such used foamed plastics.
The former method is, however, defective in that it not only tends to damage incinerators because of extremely high combustion temperature but also produces a lot of smokes leading to atmospheric pollution, as well as consumed plastics as useful resources in vain. While on the other hand, although polystyrene can be recovered to some extent by the latter method, it has also defects that it requires a great installation cost and produces the recovered products in the form of monomer and the depolymerization is very difficult for polyethylene and the like.
It is accordingly one object of the present invention to provide a novel regenerating method and apparatus for foamed plastics.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a regenerating method and apparatus for melting foamed plastics thus to recover original plastics.